The Unifi AC Mesh AP with it 1Gbs Nic card and a Throughput Speeds until 866.7 Mbps in 5Ghz and 300 Mbps in 2.4Ghz is an excellent product, combined with OpenWrt you can do what you want with. Below we will try to give you a little how-to to process the modification of the firmware.
The Ubiquiti UniFi AC Mesh AP (UAP-AC-Mesh) is essentially the same platform as UniFi AP AC LITE.
You can retrieve the detail on the OpenWrt wiki here. The Ubiquiti UniFi AC Mesh AP (UAP-AC-Mesh) is compatible with OpenWrt but before you need to downgrade to the 3.7.40 version of the firmware.
To use OpenWrt you need to follow these steps:
Transfer in ftp or directly in ssh connection to the UniFi AC Mesh AP the firmware 3.7.40
If it’s a new antenna then it’s ip is 192.168.1.20 and login/password are the default (ubnt/ubnt) else it’s same that what you put in the controller.
After connected in ssh you can use curl (or on old version wget) to download the firmware 3.7.40 and downgrade the system using the command fwupdate.real
BZ.v3.7.58# cd /tmp BZ.v3.7.58# curl https://dl.ubnt.com/unifi/firmware/U7PG2/3.7.40.6115/BZ.qca956x.v3.7.40.6115.170208.1059.bin > firmware.bin BZ.v3.7.58# fwupdate.real -m firmware.bin
Upgrade with the OpenWrt firmware
After the antenna restart log again in ssh to check the downgrade worked well (looking the version show on the prompt), download the OpenWrt basic firmware or the one you built and upgrade the Ubiquiti UniFi AC Mesh AP (UAP-AC-Mesh).
BZ.v3.7.40# cd /tmp BZ.v3.7.40# wget https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/generic/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-ubnt-unifiac-lite-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin BZ.v3.7.40# mtd write /tmp/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-ubnt-unifiac-lite-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin kernel0 Unlocking kernel0 ... Erasing kernel0 ... Writing from /tmp/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-ubnt-unifiac-lite-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin to kernel0 ... [e/w] BZ.v3.7.40# mtd -r write /tmp/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-ubnt-unifiac-lite-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin kernel1 Unlocking kernel1 ... Erasing kernel1 ... Writing from /tmp/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-ubnt-unifiac-lite-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin to kernel1 ... [e/w]
All information about the basic firmware can be found on the OpenWrt wiki here or if you prefer working with your own build you can to (take a look at our post about the OpenWrt build system here).
Important! for the 5Ghz wifi hardware it is detected as QCA988X/hw2.0 and supported by the ath10k driver. to make it working you need to install kmod-ath10k and ath10k-firmware-qca988x (or include it in your build).
Tips: other way to put the OpenWrt on the Ubiquiti UniFi AC Mesh AP (UAP-AC-Mesh) can be found on the OpenWrt wiki here. In the same way you can follow the same process for the the Ubiquiti UniFi AC Mesh PRO AP (UAP-AC-Mesh-Pro) who is similar of the UniFi AP AC PRO.
To setup the wifi you can do
root@UAP-AC-Mesh# rm /etc/config/wireless
root@UAP-AC-Mesh# wifi detect > /etc/config/wireless
root@UAP-AC-Mesh# reboot
Or use the link to the OpenWrt wiki here